


The Dreams We Should Be Having

by nightlibrary



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4156413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightlibrary/pseuds/nightlibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very extremely short, very much just for the usuals, and for anyone else who can enjoy my self-indulgent nonsense. I love you in all of your foolishness. And especially for you, there in the notes, who gives me much too much. I'll keep trying to deserve it xx</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dreams We Should Be Having

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nicheinhischest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicheinhischest/gifts).



_It smells different in here._

This is the first thought Ronan has, walking into Adam’s apartment. His head is ducked but not bowed; he watches Adam as he glides across the floor, footsteps light as he can make them. Adam is stretched across the bed, and there is a softness to his jaw that says sleep. He wears no blanket and one long foot is wearing only half of its sock. His breathing is utterly quiet, so gentle Ronan has to strain to hear it above the deafening emptiness. And the apartment does feel empty, despite its size, despite the two of them in it. Ronan brushes a hand along the back of his own neck, feeling for his tattoo. There is a comfort in knowing how real the ink is, despite the way the skin feels the same, and the way he can’t see it without the help of a mirror.

 

He wants to say, _wake up_. Wants to reach out and touch Adam’s half-bare foot, slide just one finger over the knob of his ankle, to feel the cool of skin beneath the pad of his thumb. He settles onto the ground instead to wait. Adam's dreams are safe, his sleep precious. Ronan won’t take it from him.

 

Adam’s eyelashes are like spiderwebs against the planes of his cheeks, dusty brown like his hair, tipped gold at some points. Or so Ronan has noticed from closer up. He watches them flutter now and imagines the sun catching those gold bits. And then he closes his eyes against the glare of it. Behind his lids, everything is dark and cool, and smells as different as it did before. Ronan’s throat works. He opens his mouth without thinking, subconsciously tasting the air. The scent has a familiar weight.

 

Ronan’s eyes crack slowly open.

 

The emptiness, he is forced to admit, is that of anyone but him and Adam. Ronan hasn’t been careful to keep this from happening. If anything, he’s created as many situations as he could in which the two of them could be alone, in which Ronan could watch the way Adam’s hands move when he feels only Ronan could be watching. The way he sometimes pauses to tilt his head, to listen to or look at something only he can see. These efforts, these little pockets of alone time, had been both a test and a balm to the ever-present ache in Ronan that is his hope. _Here is a thing only you can see, here are Adam’s eyes catching yours and saying: I see you, too._

 

Sitting here, watching Adam sleep, Ronan is betting everything he has on the chance that his test has been passed. That he is right.

 

Adam wakes like a storm starting. His body rolls over and his hands come up to cover his eyes. Alertness spreads slowly until finally, he is staring right at Ronan, and Ronan can feel rain. Hot and cold hitting him everywhere, his skin alive. Adam licks his lips.

 

“It smells different in here,” Ronan says. He keeps his tone neutral and stretches his legs out until he kicks the foot of Adam’s bed. One eyebrow lifts like a punctuation mark.

 

“Different how?” Adam says. His voice is muted, buried under a lingering layer of sleep. His left hand falls over the edge of the bed and opens. Ronan tries not to watch it too closely. _It isn't an invitation._

 

Ronan says, “You tell me.”

 

With a rustling quiet as his breaths, Adam sits up and stretches his arms, rolling them in their sockets, testing his newly awake fingers. He keeps his eyes on Ronan, even as he yawns. This is the new Adam, this boy who doesn't break his gaze away, this creature eating its own fear. This is Adam Parrish, magician.

 

"I guess it smells like sex," Adam says, as easily as if he's just said _It_   _smells like laundry_. "Which makes sense. Even magicians have needs."

 

Both of Ronan’s eyebrows come up, tugging one sharp corner of his mouth up with them. He ignores the way his pulse quickens, careful to keep his hands where they are, to make the drag of his gaze deliberate as he looks Adam over. Adam’s right hand has fisted itself in the sheets and Ronan can see the veins tense beneath the skin of his arm. It’s delicious, the tension, the heat. He picks, absently, at a piece of lint that’s gotten stuck to the knee of his jeans. He makes his movements casual. Slow as honey.

 

“And to think I just missed it,” he says, mouth still turned up. “Fucking shame.”

 

Adam doesn’t laugh. He lowers his eyebrows. “I don’t remember inviting you,” he says.

 

“Have I ever waited to be invited?” Ronan says, then leans forward across the floor, putting his weight in his hands and dragging his legs up beneath him so that he’s sitting on his knees. “What’d you think about?”

 

Adam bites his lip and lets it go. Ronan stares at the imprint his teeth leave behind, feeling the twist in his stomach and swallowing. His whole body feels like a groan.

 

“Nothing,” he says quietly. Then a smile, just a twitch of his lips. “At least, nothing I’m telling you. Why’re you on my floor, again?”

 

Adam swings out of bed, feet hitting the floor with a sound like a blanket unfolding, all softness. For a split second Ronan is reminded of Noah. In the next, he is reminded of the dream-ache of Adam’s fingers on his spine, of Adam’s mouth opening, of the hot wash of his words. _I know what that is._

 

There is the sound of footsteps, solid and real. Adam crouches in front of Ronan, eyes cool and deep as a winter sea. Ronan imagines that if he looks far enough, there will be the crush of waves, the roll and drag of tides. He licks his teeth inside of his mouth.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Adam says, and it’s not really a question, because his eyes aren’t asking it. His eyes are deep in Ronan’s, and Ronan feels lost. The air in his lungs is thin and too sharp, like a slap, like trying to breathe a star or the snow. Impossible. Adam smells like sleep and sweat and boy. He’s wearing boxer shorts and a blue t-shirt.

 

“If you won’t tell me what you thought about,” Ronan says, and his voice is more of a rasp than he’d hoped for, and he’d curse it if he could spare the air, “will you tell me what you dreamed of?”

 

Adam smiles. “Going to see if you can put something into one, rather than take it out?” Under the slight sour of sleep, his breath smells strangely like leaves in the fall. Ronan licks his teeth again and hears his stomach turn over, hungry. He brings a hand up to rub it over his head. He smirks.

 

“Can’t do it backward, Adam. Not on purpose,” he says. “Are you stalling? You can tell me if you fucked Gansey’s sister. Judgement free, here. All dreams accepted.”

 

There’s a flicker in Adam’s face, first of amusement and then of something else, impossible to read. Ronan feels himself lean forward without meaning to do it. Adam’s face is so close to his. Any resemblance to Noah has utterly disappeared. No one has ever felt less like a ghost than Adam does now.

 

“You’re an idiot. You know I didn’t,” Adam says. “Don’t be disgusting. What’d you dream about?”

 

Kavinsky swallowing his tattoo, every dream and nightmare swallowed by this, his greatest, his hungriest. _I know what you are._ The pinch in his muscles as he shuts himself down, doesn’t reach for the loose piece of Adam’s hair. Gansey’s eyes on the back of his head as he follows Adam down a forest path, as he traces the shape of Adam’s shoulders beneath his shirt. Teeth on his teeth, on his lower lip, on his collar, on the veins in his wrists. A single finger on his back, down and down, over and over and again. Jaws opening, the snake swallowing. The neverending circle of his secret. Adam’s eyes, placid as a lake, wild as the ocean, wide and dark with knowing. “I wasn’t the one sleeping.”

 

He keeps his voice calm.

 

Adam laughs, small but sure. “Fine. Cabeswater,” he says, and holds up his hands, balancing on the balls of his feet. “I was in Cabeswater. It was fall.”

 

Ronan waits for more, but Adam doesn’t continue. He lifts his own hands, waves one in a gesture that says _And?_ Adam shrugs.

 

“I walked. It’s thinking of something, but I don’t think it’s decided yet. It keeps changing seasons. Restless. You weren’t there.” He adds the last bit like a tease. There’s a smile behind it and Ronan can taste it.

 

“You think I was only looking for myself? What if I’m just curious? Your concerns are mine, Adam dear,” he says, but the joke falls slightly flat because he can’t get his voice to sound right. Neither of them has leaned out of the other’s space. Ronan feels dizzy, off-kilter and slightly ill. Adam is still smiling.

 

“Sure they are. Thank you for my hands,” he says, and Ronan remembers the cream. _Manibus_.

 

The dizziness is getting stronger. He feels almost as though he’s falling into a dream, or out of one. He brings a hand to his temple. “Don’t forget your teeth,” he says, and tries to smile.

 

Adam’s hand covers his, the pads of his fingers brushing Ronan’s hairline. “Sure,” he says softly. “My teeth are all yours.” Then, “I’ve got something for you. That I’m meant to give you.”

 

“What?”

 

“Part of my dream,” he says, and is he closer? Ronan feels trapped, tries to remember the stillness of Adam sleeping, the peace of his face. He gropes for calm and finds nothing but the yawning pit in his stomach. Desire like gravity, dragging him deeper.

 

“Thought you said--,” Ronan says, and he means to say that there is nothing else, not in the dream and surely not here, in the space between himself and Adam, or in the way Ronan’s fingers have curled into the carpet like they’re trying to take from it. In his chest his heart trips over itself. His pulse pounds against his veins.

 

“What?” Adam says, but there isn't time to answer. His mouth touches Ronan’s like a hand touches a door. Ronan swings open so easily it steals his breath, and then they are there, his teeth, his tongue, _did I dream this, have I ever dreamt anything other than this_. Ronan wants to move his hands but finds he can’t. His body feels tight as a bowstring. Adam’s fingers are on his face, still. His blood is so loud in his ears.

 

There’s a rushing, a whispering, something singing through him like a bird through trees. He feels a thrum beneath his skin that is both foreign and familiar. It’s the same as taking something, the same as reaching out with both hands and uprooting a dream thing from the soil of his mind. It feels like magic. It feels enormous and unknowable and terribly, beautifully true.

 

Ronan’s heart starts to ache even before it ends.

 

When Adam pulls away, Ronan’s eyes are open and waiting. They stare at each other, for one second and then two and three. Ronan’s breath shakes itself out in a sigh. Adam traces the sharp track of his cheekbone.

 

“If I told you to wake up,” Adam says, “right now, what would you say?”

 

Ronan stares at him. “I’d hit you in the fucking mouth, Adam.” His voice is much steadier. He’s the slightest bit proud.

 

“Worth a try,” he says, eyes gleaming, and drags his finger over Ronan’s lower lip. “Now. You said something about the smell? Want to see if we can make it disappear?”

 

“The magician jokes are forever, aren’t they,” Ronan says. He can taste something clean and rich on his tongue, like the forest. He wants to know what it is. He wants to know if this is how Adam tastes always, or just after a nap. How he tastes in the morning versus the evening. If it gets darker, stronger. If Ronan can keep it somewhere under his tongue, hide it behind his teeth.

 

“Never should’ve said shit, Lynch,” Adam says, and then he stands up, offering Ronan a hand. “But don’t worry, I take myself very seriously.”

 

Dryly, he says, “I haven’t noticed.” Adam pinches the skin of his wrist and in return he only raises his eyebrows.

 

Adam is leading him forward, across the short space to the bed. Ronan’s heart has barely slowed and he can feel it starting up again, powerful and loud behind his ribs. But the slow drag of Adam’s eyes and of his fingers on Ronan’s skin is enough to convince him, and he lets Adam lower them onto the edge of the mattress. The same quiet is there, somewhere, Ronan is sure. The same smooth bubble of silence that is their atmosphere. He almost wishes that he could feel afraid. Instead he feels awake, present, absolutely real. He feels seen. His skin burns beneath Adam’s, and his levity lifts like steam off of water. Adam’s eyes catch his again and hold.

 

“If I told you I could show you,” Adam says, and his voice is the night falling, dark and smooth as silk, “what I dreamed about.” He doesn’t make it a question.

 

They both know the answer. _I know what that is._

 

_I know what you are._

 

There is no fear left to swallow. Only Ronan’s gasp, quiet as a match put out, and the whisper of his answer.

 

“Yes.”

 

Adam's over him, then, pushing him back against the bed. Ronan feels shirt beneath his fingers, and then skin as the shirt rides up. Adam is breathing into his ear and against his throat and Ronan feels so hot, thinks there must be fire somewhere, and then Adam kisses him again and there's relief. If before the air in his lungs was a star, now it's a hundred, a thousand. Air rushes out and Adam rushes in. He tries to tug Adam's shirt over his head but Adam's arms are in his way. He wants to touch the knobs of Adam's spine one by one, first with his fingers and then his tongue. He wants to feel his arms shake and his thighs and he wants to taste the salt in the hollow of his throat. Adam's knees are on either side of his hips, and Ronan waits until he can't any longer to push at his back until he's bent down as far as he can be, until Ronan can feel his hipbones and bite the ridge of his ear.

 

"Ow," Adam says, and Ronan laughs at him.

 

"We're not halfway there," he says, and he doesn't know if it makes sense but it doesn't matter. He's pulling his shirt off over his head. "Get your goddamn shirt off, Parrish, Jesus. We're not actually in the church."

 

"You're an animal," Adam says, hissing, but he does as he's told.

 

Ronan laughs again, darker, into the shell of his ear. "Whatever you want, Adam Parrish."

 

He loves the way it feels to say it, both a confession and a promise. Adam sees him and Ronan wants him to, wants him to look until Ronan can feel nothing but Adam's eyes, heavy as hands, wants his burning to end in the depths of that gaze, metal plunged into the water of a forge.

 

"You always give me what I want," Adam says, and Ronan can't help it: he shudders. "At least, you do in dreams. And this is my dream." 

 

Adam bites at his neck and then kisses the bite, sucks at it, moves along, mouth on the corner of his jaw and then down at his collarbone, hands seeking Ronan's where they're digging into the flesh of his ass, the skin of his lower back, the divots between his ribs. He grabs them, drags them up above Ronan's head. He starts to move his hips, slow and soft, and then harder. Ronan groans, low in his throat.

 

"Jesus," he says. Adam pauses, shifts, and then sits up. His face is thoughtful for just a moment, and then he starts to move again. Their hips meet in just the right way. Adam's got his cock right where he wants it, and he knows it. His smile is wicked.

 

"Eat shit," Ronan says, but it's ruined by the way he can't catch his breath. "Fucking fuck."

 

"Should've known you'd curse like this in bed." Adam's moving faster now. Ronan wants to grab at his hips, but there's something so good about Adam's hands on his wrists, tight and sure. He bites his lips, twists his head sideways.

 

"In your dreams," he says, somehow getting it out, trying not to spit it like a curse, wanting Adam to know what he means, what he really wants. "In your dreams, do you fuck me?"

 

It's Adam's turn to lose his breath, his ability to speak. He grinds down into Ronan like he can't think to do anything but. He tightens his grip on Ronan's wrists.

 

"Do you hold me down like this and fuck me? I'd like it," Ronan says, "if you did. You know I'd let you, Adam, let you get your hands on my throat and fuck me--,"

 

Adam shouts. "Shit," he says, "Ronan." He releases Ronan's wrists and Ronan grabs for his waist, his hips. He arches his neck and Adam's hands slip over his chest, his shoulders. His thumbs push into the column of Ronan's throat and Ronan lets the pressure of it force white spots into his vision.

 

Adam says it again, before he's asked. "Ronan."

 

It's ridiculous, the way Ronan's in his jeans, when even in his dreams he's naked, knows he is, from the way Adam is so much more careful with him. But this Adam is not careful and Ronan still comes, and there is nothing for it but to let Adam hear him, to hope that it's enough for him to know.

 

The sudden stickiness just above the waistband of his jeans says it is.

 

There's a beat of silence. Ronan is struck by the weight of a memory: Adam yelling _Fuck!_ just before he came.

 

"Thought I was the dirty-mouthed one," Ronan says, and Adam wheezes a laugh before rolling off of him and onto the bed. Ronan turns to face him, not wanting to lose sight of the way his hair is sweat-mussed, the way his eyes seem suddenly gilded, like the earlier gold of his lashes has fallen into them.

 

"You yell fuck just to yell it. Give me this one," he says, and yawns.

 

Ronan stares at him. "You literally just woke up."

 

"You're exhausting," Adam says, and Ronan tries to elbow him in the ribs, but from the angle it's too difficult and instead Ronan reaches out to drag him closer.

 

The last of the late afternoon sunlight pours across the bed. Ronan watches Adam's face, the shifting of his eyes. His skin is flushed. Ronan smiles.

 

"You'd tell me," he says. "If I really dreamed you."

 

Adam's smile is slow to bloom. It's small on his face, but it's warm. And it's for Ronan. "You'd never manage it in a thousand years. But yeah, I would."

 

"Thank you," Ronan says, and then he kisses him, because he's beautiful, and because there is a comfort in knowing that he is real.


End file.
